Episode 26: The Keys of Marinus

Synopsis:

Barbara receives a call from a terrified Susan, informing her that she will be killed if efforts to free Ian continue...

She notifies Sabetha and Altos but decides not to tell the Doctor, for fear it will distract him from his efforts to defend Ian. As it is now known that Aydan was involved in the crime, they decide to go and see Kala, in the hope that she might have some information about the people with whom he has recently associated.

She tells them that she cannot help, and sympathises with how they must be feeling since they heard from Susan. After they have gone Kala goes into a back room, where Susan is bound and gagged. Kala is going to kill her, as instructed by her mysterious partner in crime. As they walk away Barbara realises that Kala has given herself away - how could she possibly have known that Susan had spoken to her earlier? 

They return to the apartment and are just in time to stop Kala from killing Susan.

Later, they hear from Tarron that these events have still not helped Ian as Kala is claiming that he was her accomplice. Tarron no longer believes Ian guilty, but until the stolen key is located and Kala's accomplice revealed, his hands are tied.

With time running out for the school teacher, the Doctor has a sudden brainwave. All of the evidence is locked in a cabinet in the Guardians' office at night, including the murder weapon. The Doctor arranges a trap - waiting in the office in the dark until a masked figure sneaks in and opens the cabinet. This proves to be Prosecutor Eyesen, caught with the weapon in his hands. The Doctor opens a secret compartment in the club to reveal the missing key. He knew it had to be there all the time, but this information was useless until now.

The Doctor sends Sabetha and Altos on ahead to let Arbitan know of their successful mission, whilst he, Susan and Barbara wait for Ian's release. Tarron has ensured that they have been given the key from the museum.

At the island pyramid, the Voord have taken over. Their leader, Yartek, is going to pose as Sabetha's father to trick the TARDIS crew when they arrive with the final key. Hiding his face beneath the hood of his robes, he claims to have been disfigured by a discharge from the Conscience Machine. When he tells Ian that he doesn't know Altos, the teacher suspects a trick, and so gives him the fake key which Darrius had made. They find Sabetha and Altos locked in a cell and free them. When Ian tells them what he has done, they urge everyone to leave immediately as the Machine will overload and explode. 

On hearing that they have escaped, Yartek inserts the fake key, intent on using the Machine to subjugate them and bring them back. It explodes, destroying him and the rest of the Voord.

Altos and Sabetha decide to settle in Millennius. Whilst he greatly admired Arbitan, the Doctor tells his daughter that people were never meant to be ruled by machines. She gives him the surviving key as a souvenir.

The TARDIS dematerialises from the island...

Next week: The Temple of Evil

Data:

Written by: Terry Nation

Recorded: Friday 24th April 1964 - Lime Grove Studio D

First broadcast: 5:15pm, Saturday 16th May 1964

Ratings: 6.9 million / AI 63

Designer: Raymond P Cusick

Director: John Gorrie

Additional cast: Stephen Dartnell (Yartek), Martin Cort, Peter Stenson (Voord), Alan James (Guard). 

Critique:

This episode is the one that provides the overall title for this story. Whilst the titles for many other early stories have caused some debate, this story is one of the few that has always gone under the same name.

The Keys of Marinus sees the conclusion of the courtroom drama of the previous week, then has to round off the story back on Arbitan's island. This means a return appearance for the Voord - including their leader Yartek, who was name-checked in The Sea of Death. (For fans of a certain age, he will always be known as "Yartek, Leader of the Alien Voord" - the description given by Terrance Dicks in his summary of this story for Target's The Making of Doctor Who).

In that opening episode Arbitan referred to "a man named Yartek", and when we see his mask in close-up we can clearly see signs of a human face beneath.

They are described as men, whilst Yartek himself describes his underlings as "my creatures" - but this is just a figure of speech denoting he has mastery over them, not that they are non-humanoid.

The only reason the Voord look the way they do is because they have had to travel to the island by submersible - hence their frogman-like appearance. We don't know if they look like this all the time, even in the location where they must be based. It's unlikely they would wear flippers all the time - unless they are supposed to be amphibious beings.

Yartek does not have the strange antenna-like shape on his helmet, as the character has to wear Arbitan's robes with the hood up.

Despite all the publicity, the Voord never returned to the series (but see my forthcoming "Episodes: Afterlife" post). The reasons for their failure to take off are simple - they only actually appear in one and a bit episodes, and don't have the sort of well-constructed backstory which the Daleks were given. Their true nature is never properly explained, and they just look like men in rubber suits. Maybe that's all they are, but we never get to find out. 

As they only feature in the opening and closing episodes, they only appear on the island where the Conscience Machine is housed. For the story's main villains, they aren't even mentioned by anyone elsewhere on the planet other than Darrius, who is a bit crazy anyway. And when he does mention them, it is to ask Barbara if she is one - so he doesn't even know for certain what they look like. They ought to have been made a stronger villain by being talked about as such in the other episodes - or by having them pursue the travellers through those middle instalments. 

Why should the audience take note of them, when no-one else does?

Another reason for the Voord failure to take off might also be the fact that they struggled not to trip over their own two feet. Martin Cort trips over his flippers in this episode, as he brings Sabetha to see Yartek.

We briefly mentioned when looking at The Sea of Death that this story was inspired by "Quest" tales, of which there are many in popular fiction - The Odyssey, Parsifal and the Holy Grail, The Lord of the Rings and so forth. Another inspiration we must address before leaving it is Terry Nation's love of cinema. As a child during the Cardiff Blitz he talked about taking refuge in the cinema as often as he could afford it. Amongst his favourite features were the Saturday morning serials.

Usually 13 instalments in length, each of 20 minutes duration, they always ended on a cliff-hanger save for the concluding chapter. Amongst the most famous of these serials were Flash Gordon (1936) which starred Buster Crabbe as the titular hero; Buck Rogers (1939), also starring Crabbe; and The Undersea Kingdom (1936) starring stunt man and sometime monster performer Ray "Crash" Corrigan, and which also featured Lon Chaney Jnr before he found Universal Horror fame. Flash Gordon, which is sometimes known as Space Soldiers, spawned two sequel serials - Flash Gordon's Trip to Mars (1938) and Flash Gordon Conquers The Universe (1940).

As well as these sci-fi serials, there were many generic crime ones, featuring the likes of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi. Cheap to produce, most of the studios churned these out at a prodigious rate. And Nation loved them.

The trio mentioned above all featured different chapters set in varying locations - the more various the better - with different threats in each. You can clearly see how they would have inspired Nation in the writing of this story. We had already seen some of this in the second half of his earlier Dalek story, with Ian and Barbara accompanying the Thals through jungle, swamp and cavern.

One failing of Nation's quest story is its lack or urgency. There is no real deadline to be met, so the travellers can move at their own pace. As I mentioned above, it could have done with someone or something pursuing them - the Voord being the obvious candidates.

The courtroom drama ends rather weakly. For a "whodunnit" to work, there has to be a number of suspects with means, motive and opportunity. In this episode there is only one possible suspect left - Eyesen (unless it was going to be the old senior judge, but that would have been silly). Tarron is too much on the travellers' side to be the villain. The odd thing is that Eyesen messes things up at the end. Ian is about to be executed, so all he had to do was wait another hour or two. Also, as Prosecutor he would presumably be allowed access to the Guardians' offices at any time - so why sneak in at night? And what was the point of using a mask when he is wearing a distinctive uniform?

The whole motive for stealing the key is strange. They say it is because it is valuable - one of only five in the whole universe. So who could they sell it to? The only person who might be interested is Yartek, but he has his own plan to grab all five keys.

We've been following the trials and tribulations of Ray Cusick through this story. This week he was actually rather happy, as the sets were already designed from the first and fifth episodes. One issue he had to contend with, however, was damage to the Conscience Machine prop from the time it had been kept in storage.

The main problem for him in this story was actually the success of the Dalek adventure. Nation saw what could be achieved there, and assumed that anything he wrote could be realised on screen. Story editors would later take a firmer grip on this, informing writers of the maximum number of sets they were allowed.

The script for this episode was very late in coming from Nation. John Gorrie didn't receive a copy until Thursday 16th April, just three days before rehearsals were due to begin.

Trivia:

• The viewing figures suffer another loss of 1 million from the previous week, meaning we have lost 3.5 million since The Snows of Terror. One reason for the drop this week was the fact that Juke Box Jury wasn't being shown.
• Despite gaining the lowest audience figure, this episode had the highest AI figure for the serial. This will become a common occurrence over the years - fewer people watched, but those who did liked what they saw.
• Milton Subotsky and Max J Rosenberg of Amicus / Aaru were interested in making this the second of their Doctor Who films, after Dr Who and the Daleks. Presumably they dropped the idea when they knew that a second Dalek TV story was being prepared.
• Stephen Dartnell will be back in just a few weeks time, playing astronaut John in The Sensorites. Such a quick comeback was easy as his face isn't seen in this episode, and he has altered his voice.
• Martin Cort reported that he asked William Hartnell to soften the blow from his walking stick in a scene where the Doctor strikes down a Voord. Instead, Hartnell actually hit him harder for the recording.
• We have mention of another adventure which took place before An Unearthly Child, as the Doctor states that he has met Pyrrho, the philosopher who founded the school of Skepticism. Pyrrho accompanied Alexander the Great on his campaign east into what is now India. An unproduced Season One script involved Alexander ("Farewell Great Macedon").